


magnified & sanctified

by orphan_account



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Divergent Timelines, M/M, Pining, This Bucky almost has his shit together almost, just kidding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-27 03:11:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20753387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Bucky just wants the Steve he can't have.





	magnified & sanctified

**Author's Note:**

> Canonical Endgame Steve/Peggy is referenced in this story. Title is from Leonard Cohen (not Hallelujah.)

It was like coming out of a nightmare, a long and brutal one. Bucky saw a double vision - Steve and a shadow beside him, then the darkness clawed back at him. When he came to, they were still there. He didn’t think either of them were Pierce. He wouldn’t have made that mistake again. He thought. _He thought._ His brain was fragmented to the point of incoherence. But Pierce was nothing like Steve. He only looked like him. At first. 

“You with us, Buck?” said Steve, his voice warm. 

“Yeah, but why are_ you?_” Bucky’s mouth felt like it was filled with rocks. He spat out the words the best he could. For the first time, he noticed that he was covered in cuts and bruises, in a room full of corpses. Steve and his ghost had fought him to a stand-still, it seemed. Bucky allowed himself to relax a little bit, and even to smile. Of course, this was a hallucination. He was probably frozen somewhere, the years ticking by. Dreaming of being rescued by someone who was either long dead or had already forgotten him. 

“It’s a long story,” the older Steve -- Rogers -- warned him. 

“Got all the time in the world,” Bucky said relaxedly. When Steve moved toward him eagerly, Bucky picked up a gun and shot him. It was close range and he was an excellent marksman. But his handlers had been getting careless with the protocols of his use lately. His hands shook. He missed the vitals. By a lot. Really, his heart wasn’t into it. 

And so the dream didn’t end there, as he’d hoped. 

Rogers who had been hanging back the whole time, sighed impatiently, and knocked Bucky flat. “We got a lot of shit to go through, Bucky. Let’s not do this.” 

“You’re not real. None of this is real. It’s just the same dream I’ve had for twenty years.” Bucky paused as he pulled himself up. “Okay, I don’t usually dream about having the two of you. Or that you look all _fatherly_ and shit, and also just like I just left you, but…” 

Steve smiled, despite being shot and everything. “It was a surprise to me too. I’ve only been out for six months, Bucky. But this guy here is married, if you can believe it -- to Agent Carter. To _Peggy._ Isn’t that wild?” 

“Yeah. Just wild.” 

“We can’t gossip about timelines right now,” said Rogers impatiently. “Are you ready to go, Barnes?” 

Bucky shrugged. He was not at all convinced at the reality of the situation around him, but it was better than staying where he was. He stood up and helped wrap something Steve’s wounded arm. Sidling up to him this close, touching him. He felt _so_ real. Giving into a fucked impulse, Bucky kissed him. Steve blinked at him, surprised. 

“Bucky…” Steve said, a hint of a smile on his face. “Not really the time for it.”

“Sorry about shooting you. What did you do when I died?”

“Killed myself.”

“Oh. Sweet of you.”

“Well, I saved the world to do it.”

“You bragging?”

“To you? Why bother?”

“Stop flirting, we have to go,” Rogers said and so they went. 

*

The following weeks and months, Steve and Bucky would run missions together. It was like old times. Almost. They could take down HYDRA together. Nearly. It was perfect -- within a hair’s breadth of it, anyway. 

Steve, now, Steve was the same as he always was, and he _was_ perfect. 

He was always perfect. The best friend Bucky could ask for, the best lover. It wasn’t that Steve didn’t have problems, or that he didn’t struggle with things, but -- 

Things weren’t as hard for him as they were for Bucky. They rarely saw Rogers during their missions, and every time, Rogers looked older and more world-weary. He was thirty years older than the two of them, but it seemed like double, triple of that. 

Bucky posed the question to Steve one night, when they were holed up in a seedy motel room in Atlanta. Technically, they were undercover as Bible salesmen. Bucky blew smoke through a joint made from a rolled up page from Deuteronomy and watched Steve, who was lying prone on the bed, for any signs of life. Staring at him had an effect, at least. Steve looked up and patted the bed beside him. 

Bucky pounced on him and kissed him like he wanted to suck out his soul. He did, sort of. His momma always did say that he was a bit of a vamp that way. She’d died in the years since he’d been frozen, but when he’d been younger, they’d gone to see _Dracula_ together more times than he could count. Bela Lugosi was Hungarian, just like she was — like he was, sorta. It was important. Obscurely so, but it was. 

Steve’s mouth was soft and slack, like freshly bitten fruit. Bucky licked at it eagerly before he thought briefly at how disapprovingly Rogers had looked at them, fooling around during the debriefing that afternoon. 

“Rogers is looking really beat-up. Have you noticed?” 

Steve stared at him. “No shit.” 

Bucky ignored Steve’s hand reaching for the waistband of his boxers and said, frowning, “Why isn’t the serum still working on him? Does he want to get a matching set of wrinkles with Peggy?” 

“It’s not like there’s booster shots, Buck.” 

“We don’t know that. HYDRA probably still has whatever they gave me, to keep my muscles from turning into putty before they froze me. Y’know.” 

“If they did offer something like -- well, booster shots for the serum, would you do it?” 

Bucky laughed. “Of course I would. Am I an idiot? Who would say no to being a queer with superpowers?” 

“You consider yourself a queer?” Steve looked surprised at that, and Bucky felt heat travel up and down his spine. It wasn’t like they had actually really talked about stuff like this. During the war, they had just started getting together. It had just happened naturally enough. He had assumed it didn’t need to be talked about. And after he’d come back, they had been too busy fighting to hash it out anyway -- if they were the type to hash it out. Which they had never been. 

“Yeah.” Bucky wet his lips. “You don’t? Because it’s pretty fucking queer to have a guy’s cock in your hand, Steve.”

Steve didn’t stop what he was doing, which was giving Bucky a fairly vigorous handjob while taking a sweeping assessment of his own feelings. “I’ve only been attracted to you and Peggy. I guess I never considered if it made me queer or not --” 

“Fucking _liar_,” Bucky spat out. “You forget that I’ve known you your entire life. You’ve been attracted to plenty of people besides Carter and me. Quit bullshitting.” 

“Fine.” Steve’s hands got rough and Bucky sucked in his breath. “I only loved the two of you. Is that accurate enough for you? If that makes me queer, yeah, I’m queer.” 

*

“We tried to find you, both of you,” Rogers said, apropos to nothing. It was ten years later and time had marched on. There was a Rolling Stone article about — what seemed to be Lt. General Rogers’ wild gay son’s escapades and Bucky had lost his shit laughing about it, except for how it all been a setup for HYDRA to get at Steve again. They hadn’t killed him. He wouldn’t be standing here if they had killed him, but. It had been a crazy photo shoot, anyway. He really doubted that the photographer would ever be able to use any of the pictures he’d taken before the attack — or during.

“Fifteen years is a long time to look,” Bucky said carefully. He was working on that now. Saying what he felt. The truth, but in a way he could trust. “And it wasn’t like Steve was going anywhere.”

Rogers had the decency to look ashamed. “I can admit, there was a part of me that didn’t quite want to find him. But I did want to find you. But Bucky — shit’s hard to find in 1947, especially in comparison to 2023, it’s hard to compare. You can’t imagine.”

“Yeah, I honestly can’t imagine,” Bucky said somberly. “The way you describe it, the future seems completely fucked. Howard’s kid is really gonna build a killer robot that wants to take over the world?”

“Quit deflecting,” Rogers said. “Peggy and I, we tried to find you so many times, but they kept moving you, especially when they realized we knew you existed. SHIELD was already compromised — they were always one step ahead of us. You suffered for it. I’m sorry for my failure.”

“What do you want from me? My forgiveness? Steve,” Bucky swallowed hard. “You’ve changed completely from when I last saw you. I can’t imagine what you’ve seen and what you’ve done. Yeah, what happened to me fucked me up, but you came for me and I love you for it.”

Rogers — Steve —looked down for a moment and smiled. “Yeah. It was nothing.”

“Bullshit. And thank Peggy for me too. Even though she’s too busy to see me.”

“She’s not too busy to see you, Buck. She’s too important.”

“Yeah. I got it now,” Bucky said with a laugh. 

He wanted to kiss him. 

He would’ve done it, if he thought he could have gotten away with it. Of course, he loved his Steve -- more than anybody in the world. But Rogers was Steve too and someone he could never have. It was fucked up and he couldn’t help it. 

*

Years and years later -- Rogers called them in and told them some shit about going back to his own timeline. His time was done, his kids were grown, Peggy had told him it was okay to go, whatever,_ whatever_. Bucky ignored all that stuff. Instead, he concentrated on the streaks of silver against his own Steve’s hair. The aches and pains that crept into his own body he could ignore, but to see it happen to Steve … The replacement serum they had come up with wasn’t as effective as all that, but hell -- he examined the intricacies of Rogers’ wrinkles with frank disinterest. 

“Do you think this universe is going to crumble into dust the moment you fuck off?” Bucky asked. Both Steves stared at him, with various levels of disapproval. 

“I hope not,” Steve said. “It would be horrible for the people who have been left behind.” 

“I have confidence in the two of you,” Rogers told them. 

Bucky leaned in and kissed him. Really kissed him. He’d waited for so long -- seventy years was such a long time to wait for someone. He didn’t look over at Steve afterwards

Rogers pulled away and gave him an unreadable look. “I’ll see you, Bucky.” 

“Not me,” Bucky said. “Give my regards to the other guy.” 

Rogers left after that. 

“Bucky,” Steve said after a moment, “why the hell did you do that for?” 

Bucky shrugged. “I have carried a torch so long that my hands were burned to the bone.” 


End file.
